Publisher: NISC (Pty) Ltd, South Africa
Pages: 194
Year: 2020
Dimensions: 244 x 170 mm
Women, visibility and morality in Kenyan popular media
Women, visibility and morality in Kenyan popular media
explores familiar constructions of femininity to assess ways in which it
circulates in discourse, both stereotypically and otherwise. It
assesses the meanings of such discourses and their articulations in
various public platforms in Kenya. The book draws together theoretical
questions on ‘pre-convened’ scripts that contain or condition how women
can circulate in public. The book asks questions about particular
interpretations of women’s bodies that are considered transgressive or
unruly and why these bodies become significant symbolic sites for the
generation of knowledge on morality and sexuality. The book also poses
questions about genre and representations of femininity. The assertion
made is that for knowledges of femininity to circulate effectively, they
must be melodramatic, spectacular and scandalous. Ultimately, the book
asks how such a theorisation of popular modes of representation enable a
better understanding of the connections between gender, sexuality and
violence in Kenya.
£35.00 – £36.00
About the author
Dina Ligaga is associate professor in the Department of Media Studies,
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She has published in the
areas of media and cultural studies, and popular culture in Africa, with
a specific focus on Kenyan popular culture. She is co-editor of Radio
in Africa (2011) and Eastern African Intellectual Traditions (2012). She
is also co-editor of the special issue on ‘Gender and Popular
Imaginaries in Africa’, Agenda, 2018.
Review
‘Why
are married women often the subject of ‘sex scandals’? Why is it
scandalous for a married woman to have an extra-marital affair, but for
men it demonstrates their ‘manhood’? Why is sexual desire ‘normal’ for
men, but ‘immoral’ for women? Why are young, university-educated women
framed in social media as money-grabbing hussies? What does it mean that
women are challenging social norms about their place in society, and
how they ought to conduct themselves? What are the social meanings of
the media’s cautionary tales about the punishment meted out to women
they mark as ‘wicked’, ‘loose’, ‘immoral’, ‘wild’, ‘difficult’,
‘educated’, when they step outside of patriarchal conventions of what it
means to be a Kenyan woman? Ligaga innovatively shows us how we can
read Kenyan women’s ‘transgressions’, not as moral flaws, but rather as
demonstrations of how they negotiate the constraints of national
cultural conventions, and in so doing offer new ways of ‘becoming’ a
Kenyan woman.’
Lynette Steenveld, associate professor of Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa